Tuesday, 25 May 2004

The story I was working on refuses to turn into a story in my head. There's lots of cool stuff, but no story. I may make a story of it eventually, but for now I've given up.

I'm looking again at my demon story. There's a lot of potential there. I'm taking a stab at turning it into something. It needs a lot of work. I'm going to take the references to the past out. Instead, I'll actually show the past events as a series of flashbacks. (Not sure how many yet. More than one, I think, but maybe just two.) I also need to cut a lot of stuff out of the present-day story. I'd added stuff to create "tension" before I understood that the tension comes from the past the two characters share and from the inherent danger of the activity they've embarked on. The extra stuff I added just detracts.

I made a little progress this evening. More than none, anyway, which is an improvement.

I've been getting lots of exercise. I ran over 13 miles last week, after several weeks in the 10-12 mile range. I also bicycled 30 miles, riding to work three days.

The bicycling is my favorite form of exercise, but it takes more time. (Actually, it's just possible to exercise longer bicycling than running. Running for an hour is a big deal that I can't repeat the next day without hurting myself, while bicycling for an hour is just a fun romp. It would be possible to bicycle at a level of intensity that matches that of running, and get all the aerobic benefit of the same time spent running, but maintaining that level of intensity is hard unless there's some spur to keep me going--a spur that I get in running, because if I don't maintain the intensity, I find myself walking.)

Gavin sent a flier for the reading at Quimby's on Tuesday June 1st in Chicago. Come and hear some good fiction!

The past couple of days I've been very busy at work with a super-urgent problem. We're supposed to be done tomorrow, though, so I don't expect the busy-ness to go on much longer.

I've been too busy to look for Clarion journals this year. A quick look didn't turn anything up. I guess I'll ask on the Rumor Mill.